Louisville board considering plastic bag ban for yard waste

Bypassing a divided Louisville Metro Council, city waste-management officials are moving ahead with a plan to ban the use of most plastic bags for yard waste.

The board of directors for Louisville’s Metro Government Waste Management District is scheduled to vote Tuesday to open up public comment on a regulation designed to stop non-biodegradable plastic bags from ruining compost at area landfills.

Ideally, yard waste is composted at local landfills, and then sold. But plastic in the bags has so badly contaminated the yard waste at Louisville’s Outer Loop Landfill that most of it ends up being sent to the dump, officials say.

The district board’s advisory committee, which includes representatives from waste haulers, landfill owners and environmentalists, recommended the ban without opposition at a meeting this week.

The draft regulation would instruct haulers to stop picking up yard waste in non-compostable plastic bags on Oct. 1, following an education period. People would be encouraged to mulch their grass and leaves, compost it on their own, or put yard waste into reusable containers.

“We are supportive of it,” said Robert Lee, president of Ecotech, which handles trash collection, recycling and composting in Louisville and Southern Indiana, and operates the Clark Floyd Landfill in Borden, Ind. “We know a change needs to be done.”

Lee said plastic contamination from yard waste makes it difficult for him but he believes education will be key.

“What we are talking about is breaking habits that are 20 or 30 years old,” he said.

Mayor Greg Fischer, who appoints the district board, was not available for comment Thursday, said his spokesman, Chris Poynter. But Poynter said the mayor “believes there is community support for this critical measure to improve our environment and to keep yard waste out of the landfill.”

Poynter agreed that an education period “of several months” would be key “giving citizens time to plan and be ready for when the change is implemented, most likely in time for the fall leaf season.”

Joyce St. Clair, the district’s board chairman, declined to be interviewed.

But Metro Councilman Kelly Downard, R-16, and the vice chairman of the Republican caucus, said he doesn’t like the idea of circumventing the city’s lawmaking branch, even if the district has authority to do so.

Describing the district’s board as “a small group of unelected people,” Downard and said he had thought city officials were going to “try to educate people on the benefits without going out and telling people what to do.”

Downard stopped short of taking a position on the regulation. “I want to take a hard look at it and talk to some of my colleagues.”

Metro Councilman Tom Owen, D-8th, who was a sponsor of a 2008 ban that failed, said “it’s always good if the people’s representatives can adopt a policy.” But he said he would get a briefing on the proposal Friday and hoped to be able support it.

“The goal is to compost our yard waste,” Owen said.

Local officials have been wrestling with what to do about yard waste since the 1970s, when leaf burning was banned to help clean the air. A yard waste ban at Outer Loop landfill went into effect in 1994 but has largely been ignored through a regulatory loophole that allows contaminated yard waste to be used as daily cover.

Most recently, Metro Council in 2008 decided not to adopt a plastic bag ban for yard waste after some council members challenged its benefits, as well as the cost of paper bags or acceptable biodegradable bags made of cornstarch.

In 2012, the issue was revived in large part by environmental engineer Sarah Lynn Cunningham, who became vocal about how most of the community’s yard waste was going to landfills, including Outer Loop, despite the 1994 ordinance — and that the problem was plastic bags.

Cunningham is a member of the waste district board's technical advisory committee and has calculated that the approximately 22,000 tons of yard waste generated each year in Louisville would fill enough garbage trucks to line them up five times the length of the Interstate 64/71/264 loop around the city.

A new ordinance drafted last year stalled out in Metro Council. The Courier-Journal in November reported that Metro Council President Jim King favored “an education period ... before any such law is imposed,” a spokesman for council Democrats, Tony Hyatt, said at the time.

King did not return a request for comment Thursday.

District officials say reusable containers are cheaper in the long run than plastic bags. A 32-gallon reusable container costs about $10 and can be used for years, about the same as 33 plastic bags at about 30 cents a piece, according to material supporting the proposed regulation.

City officials have said Louisville lags behind other cities in keeping yard waste out of landfills, including Cincinnati and Columbus in Ohio, Nashville, Tenn., St. Louis, Mo., and Lexington.

Louisville also has to pay more to take waste to the landfill than garbage. And city officials said the regulation also would help extend landfill life, and increase the quantity of locally made compost.

Pete Flood, a solid-waste supervisor, people could be fined as much as $100 a day if they don’t use the right containers and bags of yard waste are left along the curb, under existing solid waste rules.

But he said city officials aren’t going into this program with the intent to have heavy-handed enforcement.

“I don’t see this as being an enforcement issue,” Flood said. “It’s not really the best method to get it done. It’s through education.”

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.

Yard waste proposal• Yard waste could only be set out for collection in paper bags, certified compostable bags or reusable containers, such as 32-gallon plastic containers.• Haulers would be instructed to leave standard plastic bags at the curb throughout Jefferson County, effective Oct. 1.• A program may help low income people get free paper bags or bins.Timeline:• Tuesday: Waste Management District board scheduled to vote on whether to publish the proposed regulation, open a 30-day comment period and schedule a public meeting.• April 28: Potential board vote on the regulation.• April 29 to Oct. 1: Public education campaign.• May 1 to Oct. 1: Customers using standard (non-biodegradable) plastic bags for yard waste will get notices about the new regulation.• Oct. 1: Haulers will stop collecting yard waste in standard plastic bags.Next board meeting:• 5:30 p.m. Tuesday• MSD board room, 700 W. Liberty St.